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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

AB Conversation: An Origin Story

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This started off as a LiveJournal entry, but I decided that this probably deserved to get posted over here as well.


Six weeks ago, I started doing a podcast with my friend, Best Man at my wedding, and fellow geek Anthony. The inspiration of it was for several reasons, I have said since I started listening to Geekdrome and Geekscape that doing a show like that would be perfect for Anthony and I as we both consume massive amounts of TV, Movies, Comics, and Video Games. I realize the geek landscape was full of similar programs and Anthony and I’s wouldn’t be that much different and due to that and just the mysteriousness of podcasting, not much was done with the idea. For the past several years, yes this goes back years, Anthony or myself would briefly come up with some sort of ideas or whatever for the podcast and we always promised that someday it would happen.



As what happens in life people get busy, due to this Anthony and I would see each other less and less. Only really getting together for the rare Conan O’Brien or Ricky Gervais live show or for a Curb Your Enthusiasm marathon, the strangest part is we literally live not even a 5-minute walk from each other, literally. However, we always remained friends and because of having many of the same interests, never really grew apart.



However, everything clicked in the right way on the evening of March 25, 2012. That evening was spent with Kevin Smith (and about 1500 other people). Kevin was out promoting his new book, Tough Shit: Live Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good, and luckily came to Milwaukee for one of his stops. So for a very reasonable price, got an autographed copy of this book and we sat 2nd row for a 2 hour Q&A session. Kevin Smith has become famous for his Q&A sessions over the past 7 years or so, which is truly ironic for a guy who spent the 90’s and early 2000’s known as Silent Bob.






In recent years, Kevin Smith has become famous for the SModcast network of podcasts that he and some of his friends do. He truly believes that the future of entertainment is in podcasts, so much that he’s going to be retiring from making films after his next movie, and primarily focus on podcasting. He gave a rousing speech, that I think both affected Anthony and myself, featured on the one single idea of “Why Not?”

If you do nothing else at least watch the last four minutes, I recommend the entire clip but these 4 minutes are inspiration at it’s purest.



[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIVWjz0lidA&w=480&h=360]



On the way back to the car, we could talk about nothing else besides the podcast. Less than a month later, we finally figured out our schedules and got together the day of April 22 to record our first podcast. I think at that moment, we realized that we had something special. Not in the fact that what we are doing is the most magnificent thing on the planet, but just simply that we both found something that we both really enjoy doing. We get together every Sunday and shoot the shit for an hour and a half and record it. That people listen to it and actually enjoy listening to it, is just icing on the cake. Over the past week, we pulled in over 300 downloads including 99 on one day alone. That is fucking awesome.



For just two schmucks who just enjoy bullshitting about movies, being able to talk about them and have people actually like listening to us blab about them is a dream come true. I think these 6 podcasts are just the beginning. Whether it’s just us two or we bring in a friend of ours in to shoot the shit with us. I think this is the most fun I’ve had doing a hobby, as it incorporates all of the things I do as hobbies into a discussion and with Anthony, who is always a pleasure to talk about this sort of stuff with. It’s something that I look forward to doing every single week, normally the only thing I look forward to in life is going home after work and eating dinner. I hope you enjoy listening to this podcast even a fraction of how much I enjoy making it.

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